Notes on running GTK on Windows in general

The Win32 backend in GTK+ is not as stable or correct as the X11 one.

For prebuilt runtime and developer packages see http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/binaries/win32/

Notes on using OpenGL (GtkGLArea/GdkGLArea) on Win32

Note that on Windows, if one is running Nahimic 3 on a system with nVidia graphics, one needs to stop the "Nahimic service" or insert the GTK application into the Nahimic blacklist, as noted in https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/game-ready-drivers/13/297952/nahimic-and-nvidia-drivers-conflict/2334568/ if using programs that utilise GtkGLArea and/or GdkGLArea, or use GDK_GL=gles if you know that GLES support is enabled for the build.

This is a known issue, as the above link indicates, and affects quite a number of applications--sadly, since this issue lies within the nVidia graphics driver and/or the Nahimic 3 code, we are not able to rememdy this on the GTK side; the best bet before trying the above workarounds is to try to update your graphics drivers and Nahimic installation.

Building GTK+ on Win32

First you obviously need developer packages for the compile-time dependencies: GDK-Pixbuf, Pango, atk, glib, gettext-runtime, libiconv at least. See http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/binaries/win32/dependencies .

For people compiling GTK+ with Visual C++, it is recommended that the same compiler is used for at least GDK-Pixbuf, Pango, atk and glib so that crashes and errors caused by different CRTs can be avoided.

Currently building with Visual Studio 2008 or later is supported, either via Visual Studio project files or via the Meson build system, as described in the below sections.

For Visual Studio 2008 and 2010, a special setup making use of the Windows 8.0 SDK is required, see at the bottom of this document for guidance. Interchanging between Visual Studio 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2022 builds should be fine as they use the same CRT (UCRT) DLLs.

After installing the dependencies, there are two ways to build GTK+ for win32.

GNU tools, ./configure && make install (info here may be out of date, consider using Meson instead)

This requires you have mingw and MSYS.

Use the configure script, and the resulting Makefiles (which use libtool and gcc to do the compilation). I use this myself, but it can be hard to setup correctly.

The full script I run to build GTK+ 2.16 unpacked from a source distribution is as below. This is from bulding GTK+ 2.16.5. I don't use any script like this to build the development branch, as I don't distribute any binaries from development branches.

# This is a shell script that calls functions and scripts from
# tml@iki.fi's personal work env<6E>ronment. It is not expected to be
# usable unmodified by others, and is included only for reference.

MOD=gtk+
VER=2.16.5
REV=1
ARCH=win32

THIS=${MOD}_${VER}-${REV}_${ARCH}

RUNZIP=${MOD}_${VER}-${REV}_${ARCH}.zip
DEVZIP=${MOD}-dev_${VER}-${REV}_${ARCH}.zip

HEX=`echo $THIS | md5sum | cut -d' ' -f1`
TARGET=c:/devel/target/$HEX

usedev
usemsvs6

(

set -x

DEPS=`latest --arch=${ARCH} glib atk cairo pango libpng zlib libtiff jpeg`
PROXY_LIBINTL=`latest --arch=${ARCH} proxy-libintl`

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=
for D in $DEPS; do
    PATH=/devel/dist/${ARCH}/$D/bin:$PATH
    [ -d /devel/dist/${ARCH}/$D/lib/pkgconfig ] && PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/devel/dist/${ARCH}/$D/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH
done

LIBPNG=`latest --arch=${ARCH} libpng`
ZLIB=`latest --arch=${ARCH} zlib`
LIBTIFF=`latest --arch=${ARCH} libtiff`
JPEG=`latest --arch=${ARCH} jpeg`

patch -p0 <<'EOF'
EOF

lt_cv_deplibs_check_method='pass_all' \
CC='gcc -mtune=pentium3 -mthreads' \
CPPFLAGS="-I/devel/dist/${ARCH}/${LIBPNG}/include \
-I/devel/dist/${ARCH}/${ZLIB}/include \
-I/devel/dist/${ARCH}/${LIBTIFF}/include \
-I/devel/dist/${ARCH}/${JPEG}/include \
-I/devel/dist/${ARCH}/${PROXY_LIBINTL}/include" \
LDFLAGS="-L/devel/dist/${ARCH}/${LIBPNG}/lib \
-L/devel/dist/${ARCH}/${ZLIB}/lib \
-L/devel/dist/${ARCH}/${LIBTIFF}/lib \
-L/devel/dist/${ARCH}/${JPEG}/lib \
-L/devel/dist/${ARCH}/${PROXY_LIBINTL}/lib -Wl,--exclude-libs=libintl.a \
-Wl,--enable-auto-image-base" \
LIBS=-lintl \
CFLAGS=-O2 \
./configure \
--enable-win32-backend \
--disable-gdiplus \
--with-included-immodules \
--without-libjasper \
--enable-debug=yes \
--enable-explicit-deps=no \
--disable-gtk-doc \
--disable-static \
--prefix=$TARGET &&

libtoolcacheize &&
rm gtk/gtk.def &&
(PATH="$PWD/gdk-pixbuf/.libs:/devel/target/$HEX/bin:$PATH" make -j3 install || (rm .libtool-cache* && PATH="/devel/target/$HEX/bin:$PATH" make -j3 install)) &&

PATH="/devel/target/$HEX/bin:$PATH" gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders >/devel/target/$HEX/etc/gtk-2.0/gdk-pixbuf.loaders &&

grep -v -E 'Automatically generated|Created by|LoaderDir =' <$TARGET/etc/gtk-2.0/gdk-pixbuf.loaders >$TARGET/etc/gtk-2.0/gdk-pixbuf.loaders.temp &&
    mv $TARGET/etc/gtk-2.0/gdk-pixbuf.loaders.temp $TARGET/etc/gtk-2.0/gdk-pixbuf.loaders &&
grep -v -E 'Automatically generated|Created by|ModulesPath =' <$TARGET/etc/gtk-2.0/gtk.immodules >$TARGET/etc/gtk-2.0/gtk.immodules.temp &&
    mv $TARGET/etc/gtk-2.0/gtk.immodules.temp $TARGET/etc/gtk-2.0/gtk.immodules &&

./gtk-zip.sh &&

mv /tmp/${MOD}-${VER}.zip /tmp/$RUNZIP &&
mv /tmp/${MOD}-dev-${VER}.zip /tmp/$DEVZIP

) 2>&1 | tee /devel/src/tml/packaging/$THIS.log

(cd /devel && zip /tmp/$DEVZIP src/tml/packaging/$THIS.{sh,log}) &&
manifestify /tmp/$RUNZIP /tmp/$DEVZIP

You should not just copy the above blindly. There are some things in the script that are very specific to my build setup on my current machine. For instance the "latest" command, the "usedev" and "usemsvs6" shell functions, the /devel/dist folder. The above script is really just meant for reference, to give an idea. You really need to understand what things like PKG_CONFIG_PATH are and set them up properly after installing the dependencies before building GTK+.

As you see above, after running configure, one can just say "make install", like on Unix. A post-build fix is needed, running gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders once more to get a correct gdk-pixbuf.loaders file.

For a 64-bit build you need to remove the gtk/gtk.def file and let it be regenerated by the makefilery. This is because the 64-bit GTK dll has a slightly different list of exported function names. This is on purpose and not a bug. The API is the same at the source level, and the same #defines of some function names to actually have a _utf8 suffix is used (just to keep the header simpler). But the corresponding non-suffixed function to maintain ABI stability are not needed in the 64-bit case (because there are no older EXEs around that would require such for ABI stability).

Microsoft's tools

There are VS 2008~2022 solution and project files to build GTK+, which are maintained by Chun-wei Fan. They should build GTK+ out of the box, provided that the afore-mentioned dependencies are installed. They will build GDK with the Win32 backend, GTK+ itself (with GAIL/a11y built in), the GAIL-Util library and the gtk3-demo program. Please also refer to the README_FEATURES_MSVC.md file that reside in win32 on how to enable additional features that are not enabled by default, such as EGL support via libANGLE, which emulate the GL/EGL calls using Direct3D 9/11.

Please refer to the following GNOME Live! page for a more detailed ouline on the process of building the GTK+ stack and its dependencies with Visual C++:

https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GTK+/Win32/MSVCCompilationOfGTKStack

Alternative 1 also generates Microsoft import libraries (.lib), if you have lib.exe available. It might also work for cross-compilation from Unix.

I (Tor) use method 1 myself. Hans Breuer has been taking care of the MSVC makefiles. At times, we disagree a bit about various issues, and for instance the makefile.msc files might not produce identically named DLLs and import libraries as the "autoconfiscated" makefiles and libtool do. If this bothers you, you will have to fix the makefiles.

You may need or wish to update gtk3-build-defines.[vs]props (under the entry GenerateRequiredSourcesBase and/or GtkIntrospectNMakeCmd and/or InstallBuildsBase) to pass in the variables if they are not in:

• $(PREFIX)\bin (used for generating code for the build):

  • GLIB_MKENUMS (path to your glib-mkenums script)
  • GLIB_GENMARSHAL (path to your glib-genmarshal script)
  • GDBUS_CODEGEN (path to your gdbus-codegen script)
  • GLIB_COMPILE_RESOURCES (path to your glib-compile-resources program)

• %PATH%:

  • PYTHON (path to your Python interpreter, for generating code for the build as well as for introspection; for introspection, this must match the version series and architecture for the Python that is used to build gobject-introspection)
  • PKG_CONFIG (path to your pkg-config or compatible tool, for building introspection files in the gtk3-introspect project)
  • MSGFMT (path to your msgfmt program, if building translations during install; append install-translations to InstallBuildsBase in `gtk3-build-defines.[vs]props])

LIBDIR and INCLUDEDIR can also be passed in if they are not under $(PREFIX)\lib and $(PREFIX)\include respectively. Note that $(LIBDIR) is architecture-dependent.

If desiring to build binaries for ARM64 (aarch64), one needs to use the Visual Studio 2017 or 2019 or 2022 solution files, or use Meson with a cross-compilation file, with a Windows 10 SDK that supports ARM64 builds. At this point, building the introspection files is not supported for ARM64 builds, and you will need a Python 3.x interpreter and glib-compile-resources binaries that run on the build machine.

For Visual Studio 2017 ARM64 builds, do also check the Directory.Build.props file in $(srcroot)/win32/vs15 indicates a Windows 10 SDK version that supports ARM64 builds exists on the build machine.

For building ARM64 binaries with the Visual Studio projects, prior to the build, you may need to update gtk3-build-defines.props to pass in the variables as indicated earlier:

• GLIB_MKENUMS
• GLIB_GENMARSHAL
• GDBUS_CODEGEN
• GLIB_COMPILE_RESOURCES
• PYTHON

in the nmake command line indicated by <GenerateRequiredSourcesBase> so that they point to the respective tools and scripts that will run on the build machine. You may also need to update gtk3-version-paths.props to update <PythonDir> to the installation of the Python 3.x interpreter that will run on the build machine (or just update PYTHON=... in the command line in <GenerateRequiredSourcesBase>). To carry out the actual build using the solution files, use the "Configuration Manager" to add the ARM64 build configs by copying the settings from the x64 configs, and then build the solution. The build instructions for such builds otherwise follow the standard Win32 (x86) and x64 builds, but you need to ensure that you have ARM64 builds of the various dependencies.

It may still be possible to carry out the build and build the introspection files with Python 2.7.x using older versions of GLib and GObject-Introspection, but please note that this is not recommended and one is on his/her own by doing so.

It is now supported to build with the Visual Studio projects directly from a GIT checkout. Run in a Visual Studio command prompt, in $(srcroot)/win32:

nmake /f bootstrap-msvc.mak [PYTHON=...] [PERL=...] [FONT_FEATURES_DEMO=1] [FONT_FEATURES_USE_PANGOFT2=1] [USE_EGL=1]

where PYTHON and PERL are the respective paths to the Python and PERL interpreters, if they are not in your %PATH%-they are both required to generate the full sets of project files, as well as the auxiliary build files and headers that is not available in a GIT checkout and must be generated prior to opening the project files.

For FONT_FEATURES_DEMO, FONT_FEATURES_USE_PANGOFT2 and USE_EGL, please refer to win32\README_FEATURES_MSVC.md for more details, to enable features that is optional and not enabled by default (i.e. in the release tarballs).

It is also possible to regenerate some or all of the visual studio projects with the following, if necessary:

nmake /f generate-msvc.mak [PYTHON=...] [FONT_FEATURES_DEMO=1] [FONT_FEATURES_USE_PANGOFT2=1] [USE_EGL=1] <target>

Where target can be (they will update all related VS2008~2022 projects):

• regenerate-demos-h-win32: Regenerate the gtk3-demo projects along with demos.h.win32, useful to enable or disable the Font Features demo.
• regenerate-gdk-vsproj: Regenerate all the GDK projects with broadwayd, useful to enable or disable EGL on Windows.
• regenerate-gtk-vsproj: Regenerate the gtk-3 and gailutil-3 library projects.
• regenerate-all-msvc-projs: Re-generate all project files, and re-copy all the Visual Studio 2010 project files for VS 2012~2022.

Using Meson (for Visual Studio and MinGW builds)

Meson can now be used to build GTK+-3.x with either MinGW or Visual Studio. You will need the following items in addition to all the dependencies listed above:

• Python 3.5 or later
• Meson build system, 0.48.0 or later
• Ninja (if not using the Visual Studio project generator for Visual Studio 2010 or later)
• CMake (optional, used for dependency searching)
• pkg-config (optional, or some compatible tool, highly recommended)

For all Windows builds, note that unless -Dbuiltin_immodules=no is specified, the input modules (immodules) are built directly into the GTK DLL.

For building with Meson using Visual Studio, do the following:

• Create an empty build directory somewhere that is on the same drive as the source tree, and launch the Visual Studio command prompt that matches the build configuration (Visual Studio version and architecture), and run the following:

• Ensure that both the installation directory of Python 3.5+ and its script directory is in your %PATH%, as well as the Ninja, CMake and pkg-config executables (if used). If a pkg-config compatible drop-in replacement tool is being used, ensure that PKG_CONFIG is set to point to the executable of that tool as well.

• For non-GNOME dependencies (such as Cairo and Harfbuzz), where pkg-config files or CMake files could not be properly located, set %INCLUDE% and %LIB% to ensure that their header files and .lib files can be found respectively. The DLLs of those dependencies should also be in the %PATH% during the build as well, especially if introspection files ar to be built.

• For GNOME dependencies, the pkg-config files for those dependencies should be searchable by pkg-config (or a compatible tool). Verify this by running $(PKG_CONFIG) --modversion <dependency>.

• Run the following: meson <path_to_directory_of_this_file> --buildtype=... --prefix=..., where buildtype` can be:

  • release
  • debugoptimized
  • debug
  • plain.

  Please refer to the Meson documentation for more details. You may also wish to pass in -Dbroadway_backend=true if building the Broadway GDK backend is desired, and/or pass in -Dbuiltin_immodules=no to build the immodules as standalone DLLs that can be loaded by GTK dynamically. For Visual Studio 2010 or later builds, you may pass in --backend=vs to generate Visual Studio project files to be used to carry out the builds.

  If you are building with Visual Studio 2008, note the following items as well:

  • For x64 builds, the compiler may hang when building the certain files, due to optimization issues in the compiler. If this happens, use the Windows Task Manager and terminate all cl.exe processes, and the build will fail with the source files that did not finish compiling due to the hang. Look for them in build.ninja in the build directory, and change their compiler flag /O2 to /O1, and the compilation and linking should proceed normally.

  • At this time of writing, the following files are known to cause this hang:

    • gtk\gtkfilechoosernativewin32.c
    • gtk\gtkfilesystemmodel.c
    • gtk\gtktextsegment.c
    • gtk\gtktextbtree.c
    • gtk\gtkrbtree.c
    • testsuite\gtk\treemodel.c
    • testsuite\gtk\textbuffer.c
    • testsuite\gtk\rbtree.c
    • testsuite\gtk\icontheme.c

  • Upon running install (via "ninja install"), it is likely that gtk-query-immodules-3.0.exe will fail to run as it cannot find msvcr90.dll or msvcr90D.dll. You can ignore this if you did not specify -Dbuiltin_immodules=no when configuring via Meson. If -Dbuiltin_immodules=no is specified, you need to run the following after embedding the manifests as outlined in the next point: $(gtk_install_prefix)\bin\gtk-query-immodules-3.0.exe > $(gtk_install_prefix)\lib\gtk-3.0\3.0.0\immodules.cache

  • You will need to run the following upon completing install, from the build directory in the Visual Studio 2008/SDK 6.0 command prompt (third line is not needed unless -Dbuiltin_immodules=no is specified) so that the built binaries can run:

      for /r %f in (*.dll.manifest) do if exist $(gtk_install_prefix)\bin\%~nf mt /manifest %f /outputresource:$(gtk_install_prefix)\bin\%~nf;2
      for /r %f in (*.exe.manifest) do if exist $(gtk_install_prefix)\bin\%~nf mt /manifest %f /outputresource:$(gtk_install_prefix)\bin\%~nf;1
      for /r %f in (*.dll.manifest) do if exist $(gtk_install_prefix)\lib\gtk-3.0\3.0.0\immodules\%~nf mt /manifest %f /outputresource:$(gtk_install_prefix)\lib\gtk-3.0\3.0.0\immodules\%~nf;2

• The more modern visual style for the print dialog is not applied for Visual Studio 2008 builds. Any solutions to this is really appreciated.

Support for all pre-2012 Visual Studio builds

This release of GTK+ requires at least the Windows 8.0 or later SDK in order to be built successfully using Visual Studio, which means that building with Visual Studio 2008 or 2010 is possible only with a special setup and must be done in the command line with Ninja, if using Meson.
Please see https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/using-the-windows-software-development-kit-sdk-for-windows-8-consumer-preview-with-visual-studio-2010/ for references; basically, assuming that your Windows 8.0 SDK is installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0 ($(WIN8SDKDIR) in short), you need to ensure the following before invoking Meson to configure the build. Your project files or Visual Studio IDE must also be similarly configured (using the Windows 8.1 SDK is also possible for Visual Studio 2008~2012, replacing $(WIN8SDKDIR) with $(WIN81SDKDIR), which is in C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1 unless otherwise indicated):

• Your %INCLUDE% (i.e. "Additional Include Directories" in the IDE) must not include the Windows 7.0/7.1 SDK include directories, and $(WIN8SDKDIR)\include\um, $(WIN8SDKDIR)\include\um\share and $(WIN8SDKDIR)\include\winrt (in this order) must be before your stock Visual Studio 2008/2010 header directories. If you have the DirectX SDK (2010 June or earlier) installed, you should remove its include directory from your %INCLUDE% as well.

• You must replace the Windows 7.0/7.1 SDK library directory in %LIB% (i.e. "Additional Library Paths" in the IDE) with the Windows 8.0/8.1 SDK library directory, i.e. $(WIN8SDKDIR)\lib\win8\um\[x86|x64] or $(WIN81SDKDIR)\lib\winv6.3\um\[x86|x64]. If you have the DirectX SDK installed, you should remove its library directory from your %LIB% as well.

• You must replace the Windows 7.0/7.1 SDK tools directory from your %PATH% ("Executables Directories" in the IDE) with the Windows 8.0 SDK tools directory, i.e. $(WIN8SDKDIR)\bin\[x86|x64]. If you have the DirectX SDK installed, you should remove its utility directory from your %PATH% as well.

• The Windows 8.0 SDK headers may contain an roapi.h that cannot be used under plain C, so to remedy that, change the following lines (around lines 55-57) (this is not necessary for the Windows 8.1 or later SDKs):

  // RegisterActivationFactory/RevokeActivationFactory registration cookie
  typedef struct {} *RO_REGISTRATION_COOKIE;
  // RegisterActivationFactory/DllGetActivationFactory callback

to

  // RegisterActivationFactory/RevokeActivationFactory registration cookie
  #ifdef __cplusplus
  typedef struct {} *RO_REGISTRATION_COOKIE;
  #else
  typedef struct _RO_REGISTRATION_COOKIE *RO_REGISTRATION_COOKIE; /* make this header includable in C files */
  #endif
  // RegisterActivationFactory/DllGetActivationFactory callback

This follows what is done in the Windows 8.1 SDK, which contains an roapi.h that is usable under plain C. Please note that you might need to copy that file into a location that is in your %INCLUDE% which precedes the include path for the Windows 8.0 SDK headers, if you do not have administrative privileges.

Visual Studio 2008 hacks

(Please see the section on Meson builds which touch on this topic)

Multi-threaded use of GTK+ on Win32

Multi-threaded GTK+ programs might work on Windows in special simple cases, but not in general. Sorry. If you have all GTK+ and GDK calls in the same thread, it might work. Otherwise, probably not at all. Possible ways to fix this are being investigated.

• Tor Lillqvist tml@iki.fi, tml@novell.com
• Updated by Fan, Chun-wei fanc999@yahoo.com.tw